‘The Mickey Mouse Harvest’ and other poems by Nyaudo Amos
By: Nyaudo Amos
THE MICKEY MOUSE HARVEST
They go out! they go out!
In the pattering chilly rains.
The men fronting the march
With whetted machetes in their hands.
And hoes cleaving to their shoulders
Like a swarm of ants tending food to their nests.
They go out! they go out!
On the busy red-roads
That all legs flies to betimes.
The torpid nonexcepted women amble behind,
As unweaned babes clutch their mother’s backs
Like monkeys on trees,
While spry boys chunter for a chance to be excused.
They go out! they go out!
Under the unruly scorching sun:
Wounding wild fir forests,
Amputating the hands and legs of trees,
And shaving lands off their beautiful green hairs.
They go out! they go out!
Raining down hell
Upon the dry butchered bush;
Engendering loss of the wildlives havens,
And thus living in their houses
homeless.
They go out! they go out!
Molding mounds, planting stems and crops.
Upon the blossoming glorified plants;
Pests bug in earnest without mercy
Chopping off their flowers and leaves
That often dance at the passing of a gale.
They go out! they go out!
Warring deleterious locusts and cankerworms;
The foes of their green, serene vegetations,
Who neither plant nor weed,
But only reap were they soweth not.
They go out! they go out!
Into tracks and routes of the forest;
Some in solitude, treads like recluse jungle leopards.
Some in twos and threes like pack of wolves,
Tussling the course of livelihood.
They come back! they come back!
Looking knackered in shabby mien
Wearing rancor on their faces like a mask
Thus all could see all is well with nothing
Precipitated by harvest letdowns.
They come back! they come back!
The planting biddings are over
The weeding troubles are gone
The labour was heavy and arduous
But the harvest is mickey mouse.
THE ARMIES OF KNOWLEDGE
The armies of knowledge
Are armies without uniforms or guns,
They’re the warp and woof
Of cultured persona grata:
Movers and shakers
Sweeping the ground of illiteracy
Burning the house of ignorance
Strangulating the spirit of fear
Thwarting traps and snares of unseriousness
Levelling the mountains of doubts
Filling the valleys of complex inferiority
Dusting the boards of morality
And from station to stations
Planting the flags of knowledge
Igniting the light of brighter tomorrow.
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IMPOSSIBILITY
When impossibility speaks aloud
The doors of possibilities are slammed shut
In the subterranean corner of the mind,
Where ability sleeps in the bosom of impossibility.
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Nyaudo Amos is a budding poet, a song writer and a talented singer. He graduated from the University of Uyo, Nigeria, where he obtained a degree in Communication Arts. Pen name: “Anointed Pen.”